Lessons from the Ant

In Jesus’ teaching He would often use various aspects of God’s natural creation to illustrate the spiritual truths He wanted to get across. Jesus spoke of fruit bearing trees, vines and branches, birds and the lilies of the field, seed and different kinds of soil, sheep and goats, wolves and serpents. I think much of God’s creation was designed not just to have an ecosystem where life is maintained and for our enjoyment, but also to give us wisdom.

We’re going to look at a little aspect of God’s creation this morning that has great wisdom for us. Solomon, the wisest man before Jesus, encouraged people to look at this bit of creation and gain wisdom by doing so. Solomon studied plants and animals. He was a horticulturalist and agriculturalist and biologist (I Kings 4:33). In Proverbs 6:6 he wrote, “Go to the ant, O sluggard, Observe her ways and be wise…” That’s what I want us to do this morning. Observe the ways of the ant and be wiser because of it.  Now in Proverbs 6, primarily what Solomon had in mind was the ant’s work ethic, which we’ll talk about some, but there’s also much more to be learned from them.

When you think about ants individually, you wouldn’t think they would fair very well in this world. They’re near the bottom of the food chain. They’re a staple in the diet of armadillos, anteaters, spiders, frogs, lizards, certain snakes, birds, fish, even bears sometimes. It’s a dangerous world for ants. Many cannot see very well. They cannot outrun their predators. And only a tiny fraction of them can reproduce.

Yet these slow, barely seeing, vulnerable little creatures not only survive in this world, but they absolutely flourish. They are arguably the greatest success story in the history of the animal kingdom. To help realize how many of them there are in the world, realize it would take over a million of average size ants to equal just my body weight. But there are so many ants in the world that the total biomass of ants is almost equal to the total biomass of human beings in the world. That means there’s close to a million ants for every human being on earth. Ants have colonized almost every landmass. The only places they do not live are places like Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland. The reason, of course, is they don’t have any little mittens. They’ve probably even invaded your kitchen and bathroom. The largest colony ever discovered stretches 3,700 miles along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s hard to comprehend and you wouldn’t know it, because it’s underground. If you’ve ever had ant mounds in your yard you know they are very difficult to get rid of. They flourish in the world.

When you think about Christians individually, you wouldn’t think they would fair very well in this world either. It’s a dangerous world for Christians. Our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour,” said Peter (I Peter 5:8). And it’s not just him. He’s the alpha male of a huge pride of lions that’s hunting us. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood,” said Paul, “but against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). And on our own we are weak and vulnerable to many things that can kill us – temptation, distraction, misplaced priorities, discouragement, intimidation, worldly pressure, deception. It’s difficult for most of us on our own to reproduce more disciples like ourselves, to actually go build a relationship with someone and get them open to listening to us and then teach them about the Lord and establish for them the truthfulness of what we’re saying and show them how to follow the Lord and bring them to surrender their life to the Lord. That’s not easy for most of us.

How can we survive and multiply and thrive and fill the earth? We can do it the same way the ants do it. Every ant is a contributing part of a colony. Ant colonies are often times described as “super organisms,” because they function like a single entity. All the ants work together, each contributing the little bit they can toward the same purpose, the health and advancement of the colony. They’re all like little tiny members of one body with one mind controlling them. The way Christians will multiply and thrive is in the same way. In Jesus’ prayer the night before His arrest in the garden, John 17:20-21, He prayed, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone [meaning not just on behalf of His apostles], but for those also who believe in Me through their word [and that’s all of us, we’ve come to believe in Christ through the word the apostles spread and wrote down for us. So the Lord asked for us]; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” How can we conquer the world for Christ? How do we convince the world Jesus is the One our Maker has sent for us? By being one, like one super organism, like the ants. Paul said it too. Ephesians 4:16, “from Christ the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” These individual parts of the body are individual Christians. When Christians are fitted and held together and each doing their little parts like members of a body, like a super organism, the body grows and thrives.

But often the ants are better at it than we are. We can learn from the ants how to better function as one body, as the Lord would have us to. Let’s observe four ways of the ants that the Lord calls us to imitate.

First…

The Purpose of Every Ant

I mean what does an ant live for? What is the goal that an ant gives its time and energy, its life to achieving? It’s evident when you think about what ants do.

When a couple hundred thousand army ants travel across the floor of the Amazon rain forest to go make a raid somewhere, along the path there will be little ant-size potholes that make travel more difficult and slows them up. So some of the ants will actually use their own bodies to fill the little potholes in the path. If they come upon a hole that’s about their body size, they will plug the hole with their body. Incredibly, they will even match themselves with the holes they fit best. Bigger ants will plug the bigger holes. Smaller ants will plug the smaller holes. And they will lie there and let the thousands of other ants walk on them. Once all the traffic has passed for the day, the down trodden ants will climb out of the potholes and follow the rest back to the nest.

When a foraging ant discovers a large piece of food, he doesn’t eat his fill, then keep it a secret so he can come back later for more. Rather he immediately heads back to the nest leaving a scent trail other ants can follow to the food source.

Researchers have noticed that ants seem to have a way of communicating to each other about their own health and nutrition, and if one ant is not as well off as the others, the other ants will feed the weaker one.

Among certain ant species there are ants in the colony called soldier ants. If a hole is made in the nest by the weather or something, if there’s a breach in the ant hill where it’s vulnerable to enemy intruders, these soldier ants will plug the holes with their heads. So if anything comes to steal food or babies they’ve got to get through them first.

What’s an ant’s purpose? An ant’s purpose is simply the good and advancement, not of itself, but of the colony. They give their lives for the colony.

What is your purpose in life, really? What are you living for? Why do you go to the job you go to during the week? Why do keep the hours you keep at the job? It’s to earn money of course. But why do you earn money? Why do you conduct yourself and interact with people the way you do at work? Why do you do what you do when you come home from work? Why do you spend your money the way you spend it? Why do you hang out with the people you hang out with and interact with them the way you do? Why do you spend your Saturdays the way you spend your Saturdays?

For most people, the purpose of most of what they do is to gain the most earthly enjoyment and pleasure and status they can for themselves and perhaps also for their kids and their spouse. Their vision of what they’re hoping to attain by what they do is something like an affluent life in a big house with trophies on display and pictures on the walls of places they’ve been and things they’ve achieved, and they can have people over who will ask them about those things and they can tell the stories and impress them and be admired. And they can drive in their nice car to go out to eat at nice restaurants whenever they feel like…. Something like that is what they’re after. It’s their purpose in life.

I know it sounds radical and extreme, but I really believe the Lord has called us to be like the ants, to give our lives for the good and advancement, not of ourselves, but of the colony, to earn money for the kingdom, to interact with people at work and everywhere else in a way to show them the greatness of our King and that they need to know Him and serve Him, to pray much for the kingdom, to spend our Saturdays for the kingdom, to wake up each morning and go and do for the kingdom. I’m not saying don’t have any fun. There are lots of fun kingdom benefiting things to be done. And occasionally it’s good for everybody if you refresh and rejuvenate in a little recreation. Jesus would rest on occasion. But He would rest to rejuvenate for service.

Listen to these Scriptures. I John 3:16, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” II Corinthians 5:15, “He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” Ephesians 5:1-2, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Secondly, think about…

The Work Ethic of Every Ant

Have you ever seen an ant just standing around or sitting in the shade? I cannot remember ever seeing an idle ant. They are always busy. Proverbs 6:6, “Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise.” There are no sluggards among the ants. And in the next verse Solomon says, “which, having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest.” Well, they kind of have a chief. They have a queen. But the queen ant doesn’t have to patrol around like a chief or an officer and tell ants to work. She doesn’t have to beg ants to work. She doesn’t have to twist their little arms or bribe or threaten to get them off the couch and working. Every ant is self-motivated. They work without having to even be asked.

Are you an ant for the Lord? There’s more than enough work for each of us to fill our plate every day. And probably nobody is going to come up, tap you on the shoulder and ask you to do any of it. There are people to be visited and encouraged. There are many calls to be made to struggling people. There are many invitations to be given to people you know. There is much to do to bring up kids in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. There are many prayers that need to be prayed. There are many people to be taught. There is spiritual mentoring to be done. There are many acts of kindness to be done, things to fix, things to improve, meals to serve, relationships to build. There is plenty of work for the colony for everyone.

Maybe that’s not appealing to you, to be busy like an ant in the work of the Lord. But the Lord is teaching me, I’m learning, probably slower than I should be, but I’m learning that you’re never more happy than when you lose sight of yourself and when you’re living for a purpose bigger than yourself. You just feel better when you get your mind off yourself. There’s good feelings that come with blessing the lives of other people and knowing you’re pleasing the Lord. It boosts your immune system, interestingly, the studies say. Your relationships with people are better. It’s part of why Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

And ants are not just busy in some work for the colony, but they work in the capacity in which they will most benefit the colony. It may not be the most desirable or glorious job in the colony. It may be plugging a pothole with their body and getting walked on. It may be plugging a nest hole with their head. It may be digging endlessly or foraging endlessly. But if it’s how they can be most helpful, that’s what they do.

You know Timothy was equipped and trained and gifted for the ministry of preaching. That was the job in which he could do the most good for the church. But he got to a point where he didn’t really like the job of preaching anymore. A lot of times people didn’t like what he was preaching and opposed him and persecuted him for it. He got to a point when II Timothy was written where he wanted to do something else like just mow the church lawn or counsel married couples or visit people in the hospital or something other than preach. But Paul wrote to Timothy, II Timothy 4:5, “Timothy, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” God wants us to not just work in some way for the advancement of the church, but to work in the way in which we can be most helpful. I don’t know what that is for you. It differs from Christian to Christian. Maybe it’s teaching kids, but you don’t really enjoy teaching kids, but you’re just really good at it and it blesses those kids and gets them off to a good start in life and blesses their families and you can do the greatest good in that capacity. Maybe it’s maintaining the buildings and grounds here, but it’s not your favorite thing to do, but you’ve got the time and the know-how and we need you and it’s how you can do the most good.

You know, we’ll have the rest of eternity to look back at what we did with this life, this life that is like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. How awesome to be able to look back on a life used up in the service of the Lord, who created us and died for us, in the capacity where we were most useful.

Let’s look at…

The Perseverance of Every Ant

Imagine being an ant and every day of your entire life has been nothing but labor to build this dirt mound where you and all the other ants live. And one day this giant kid comes along and just kicks over your mound, your life’s work! What would you do? Drop whatever you were carrying, throw your little ant arms up in despair, say, “Nooooo! I can’t believe it! That’s it! I’m done. No way am I doing that again. That kid will probably just walk by another day and kick it over again anyway.” But have you ever kicked over an ant hill? What do they do? Not a one of them stands off to the side saying, “I’m not doing that again.” Instead every ant goes into turbo work mode.  They work harder and faster than ever to rebuild what you destroyed. You cannot discourage ants. You cannot get ants to quit working. You can only get them to work harder.

We’re much more easily discouraged from working. If we don’t see much for results in the people we’re trying to influence or teach, if we’re not receiving acknowledgment or thanks for what we’re doing, if we’re criticized, if we don’t see God answering our prayers the way we think He should answer them, if we make mistakes and we’re embarrassed or feel we’re not very good at what we’re doing, if hardship comes, financial trouble, marriage trouble, health trouble, relationship trouble… For all kinds of reasons, discouragement and apathy can set in.

The Lord has made many promises to us to empower us to be like ants who never lose heart. You might feel like a farmer plowing and sowing seed in the sands of a desert, that your labor is just for nothing, that there will be nothing produced from it, no crop, no harvest. But He’s promised us, Galatians 6:9, “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” Guaranteed, you persevere in doing good for the colony of the Lord and you will reap a harvest. It will be worth every bit of effort you put in. Whether we’re making any difference in the lives of people or not, our efforts are at least worship to the Lord, like a fragrant aroma to the Lord, and in eternity we will be so glad we honored the Lord the way we did. I Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” It’s a promise. And “the sufferings of this present time,” said Paul, “are not even worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Let’s trust the promises of the Lord. Let’s let the promises of the Lord empower us to just always be about the work of the Lord no matter what Satan sends our way to discourage us.

I’ll just point out one more thing about ants that enables them to thrive so well…

Ants are Thick-Skinned.

They have a hard exoskeleton, like a protective casing around their bodies, which makes them pretty tough. So they can endure the rigors of everyday ant life, they can take little rocks falling on them and other ants walking on them. When I was a kid we had these big black ants in our yard. And my brother and I had a couple air powered BB guns. One summer day we ran out of BBs and we decided to see what would happen if we put an ant down the barrel of the BB gun and pumped it and shot. They fit just perfectly down the barrel. And we discovered they don’t just explode inside when you shoot. Because they’ve got this hard exoskeleton, they shoot just like BBs. But unlike BBs if you shoot them at a hard surface they don’t bounce off. They splat. And then we discovered you could put 4 or 5 of them down the barrel and have a kind of shot gun effect. I know, that wasn’t nice. Shouldn’t do that. But just thought I’d share that with you to emphasize the point – ants are thick-skinned.

Well, if we’re going to multiply and thrive like the ants, the Lord says we need to be thick skinned as well to take the rigors of being with other people. How many times have you heard of people quitting church because they were offended at something somebody said, somebody insulted them or offended their kids, or people didn’t invite them out to lunch, or they heard somebody said something about them, and it sort of put them out of operation for the Lord. Colossians 3:12-13, “So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.” Notice a couple characteristics there the Lord commands. Patience – that means when you’re hurt or when you’re offended or when you’re disappointed or when you’re frustrated, you don’t blow up in anger, you don’t retaliate, you don’t give up and leave. Patience means to suffer long before reacting negatively. And then bearing with one another, what does that mean? I think that means just plain put up with the stuff that bugs us about each other. And a little nugget of wisdom that struck me the other day as I was reading, Ecclesiastes 7:21, “Also, do not take seriously all words which are spoken, so that you will not hear your servant cursing you. 22 For you also have realized that you likewise have many times cursed others.” I think when he says “your servant” he means somebody that respects you and serves you, that puts your interests over their own, somebody that you should appreciate and love. And if you take literally and seriously everything you hear, you will probably even hear your servant cursing you. Everybody says things about other people sometimes in a moment of anger or frustration or having a bad day or just without thinking that they don’t mean, that they regret later, or everybody says things that can easily be misinterpreted and blown out of proportion. And I hear Solomon saying if we take everything we hear that somebody said literally and seriously we’re going to lose a lot of good friendships that we could have. So you hear that somebody you thought liked you said something negative about you, don’t take it too seriously. Give the person the benefit of the doubt, maybe they’re having a bad day, maybe they don’t mean it, maybe they’re exaggerating. And even if they really do feel that way about you, they’ll probably change their mind if you react well.

Let’s learn from the ants. Let’s have as our purpose the good of the colony, not our earthly happiness. Let’s discover the joy of serving in the way we can be most useful. Let’s never quit at it no matter what. And let’s be thick skinned as the Lord calls us to be.

– James Williams

Photo by Dragan Milicevic

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